Heaven s Gate (1981)

November 19, 1980

'HEAVEN'S GATE,' A WESTERN BY CIMINO

By VINCENT CANBY

Published: November 19, 1980

''HEAVEN'S GATE,'' Michael Cimino's gigantic new western and his first film since the Oscar-winning ''The Deer Hunter,'' is apparently based on a historical incident that occured in Johnson County, Wyo. in 1890: with the tacit approval of the state government, the county's wealthy cattle barons banded together in a systematic attempt to murder more than 100 German, Bulgarian, Russian and Ukrainian settlers who were encroaching on their lands. If one can say nothing else on behalf of ''Heaven's Gate'' (and I certainly can't), it's probably the first western to celebrate the role played by central and eastern Europeans in the settlement of the American West.

''Heaven's Gate,'' which opens today at the Cinema One, fails so completely that you might suspect Mr. Cimino sold his soul to the Devil to obtain the success of ''The Deer Hunter,'' and the Devil has just come around to collect.

The grandeur of vision of the Vietnam film has turned pretentious. The feeling for character has vanished and Mr. Cimino's approach to his subject is so predictable that watching the film is like a forced, four-hour walking tour of one's own living room.

Mr. Cimino has written his own screenplay, whose awfulness has been considerably inflated by the director's wholly unwarranted respect for it. Though the story really has to do with the contradictory feelings of Jim Averill (Kris Kristofferson), the Federal marshal in Johnson County, toward the land war, toward a coltish, completely unbelievable frontier madam (Isabelle Huppert) and a fellow (Christopher Walken) who was once his best friend, the film's first 20 minutes are devoted entirely to Averill's graduation from Harvard 20 years before. You thought the wedding feast that opened ''The Deer Hunter'' went on too long? Wait till you see ''Heaven's Gate.'' The situation isn't helped by the fact that the university looks not like Harvard but like Oxford, where it was actually photographed.

The narrative line is virtually non-existent, which is not to say there isn't a good deal of activity - fights, shoot-outs, cross words, and lots and lots of sequences in which hundreds of extras are belligerent or dumbfoundingly merry. Though the extras speak in Russian, German, Bulgarian and Ukrainian, all of which is dutifully translated by English subtitles (along with some other dialogue we don't even hear), they act in the mindless fashion of extras in a badly directed, robust Romberg operetta.

The point of ''Heaven's Gate'' is that the rich will murder for the earth they don't inherit, but since this is not enough to carry three hours and 45 minutes of screentime, ''Heaven's Gate'' keeps wandering off to look at scenery, to imitate bad art (my favorite shot in the film is Miss Huppert reenacting ''September Morn'') or to give us footnotes (not of the first freshness) to history, as when we are shown an early baseball game. There's so much mandolin music in the movie you might suspect that there's a musical gondolier anchored just off-screen, which, as it turns out, is not far from the truth.

Nothing in the movie works properly. For all of the time and money that went into it, it's jerry-built, a ship that slides straight to the bottom at its christening.

Vilmos Zsigmond's gritty, golden photography looked better in ''McCabe and Mrs. Miller.'' The aforementioned performers, plus Sam Waterston as the principal villain - each one a talented professional, have no material to work with. In addition they're frequently upstaged by the editing, which sometimes leaves them at the end of a scene with egg on their faces, staring dumbly into a middle distance, at absolutely nothing.

''Heaven's Gate'' is something quite rare in movies these days - an unqualified disaster.

Murder in the West

HEAVEN'S GATE, directed and written by Michael Cimino; director of photography, Vilmos Zsigmond; film editors, Tom Rolf, William Reynolds, Lisa Fruchtman and Gerald Greenberg; music by David Mansfield; produced by Joann Carelli; released by United Artists. At Cinema I, 60th Street at Third Avenue. Running time: 225 minutes. This film is rated R.